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Leptis, his harbour and the Romans

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

As we have seen Leptis’ landing place had been the origin of its wealth, and, also if it was only a simple inlet created by the “uadi” and protected by a row of natural rocks which served as breakwaters, it had worked very well. It had mooring possibilities and a large tract of beach where in winter time or in a tempest it was possible to haul the merchant ships and also land them when they needed to be caulked and repaired. A simple landing certainly, but it had been the fortune of this North African town. It was not Alexandria’s harbour with its towering light-house, but it had worked well until when its placid and serene life was abruptly compromised by an inexperienced attempt to improve it.
Probably some proconsul of Nero’s time thought that he could better protect the ships from the fury of the waves by building a groyne and with it close the western extremity of the cove. Unfortunately he didn’t realise that this groyne barred just the uadi’s outing. Then, every time that this torrent rose, it deposited tons of the red desert sand and tons of silt against the bar. It was already very unfortunate, but the proconsul didn’t confine his attempts to the groyne and, thinking to transform the landing place in a kind of lake, where - in his mind - the ships could stay anchored during any tempest, he decided to unite the most eastern rocks to the land. The result of this intervention was to exclude from the basin the beneficial eastern currents which for centuries had swept the inlet and had taken away the sands before they could heap up in it. Then after all those transformations the only current left free to enter in this kind of harbour was the northern one, a damaging current which brought with it lots of sand and deposited it in the basin. Thus the bottom of the landing place began to rise month after month and year after year until the landing place couldn’t be used any more.
Obviously it took some time for it to be completely silted but at the end of the I cent A.D- the harbour and the life of Leptis were both compromised and the rich ship owners had to find some remedy. Probably many of them had their estates on the coast and the others who didn’t have one could very soon buy it. Thus during the II cent. A.D. on the coast at both sides of Leptis rose a row of splendid maritime villas. They had gorgeous mosaics floor, luxurious baths and everything that was necessary to lead a pleasant life, but above all they had good landing places The best area to implant them was on the western side of Leptis, an indented coast with high rocky promontories between which white and sandy beaches, the “marse”, stretched itself. The promontories were ideal because thus mooring on one or the other side of them the ships would always be alee. Moreover in winter time or in case of a tempest the ships could be hauled on the “marse”. Thus little by little all the wealthy citizens of Leptis built their country mansions and left the town, which already hit by the silted up harbour, saw the decrease of the money and of the taxes which up to then had been paid by its wealthiest contributors.
Then a Leptitan, who never succeeded in speaking a good latin and who during all his life spoke it with a strong North African accent, rose to the throne. At this moment Leptis was declining and its silted landing place didn’t work any more. Now, apart from the interest he felt for his natal town, Septimius Severus knew the importance Leptis had for the Mediterranean navigation, therefore he tried to save it.
The Leptitan emperor gave to the town its very important monumental complex all centralized on the harbour he wanted to create. Axis of his town planning was a “via colonnata” which, starting by a colossal Nimphaeum set just in front of the Hadrianic Baths, went on toward the harbour’s area. On the western side of this road were set the over decorated severian marble Forum and the Basilica. In the Forum, around a large space which culminated with the principal temple, ran a portico supported by Corinthian columns. Here, as if to oversee the imposing esplanade, marine goddesses whose cheeks and brows were underlined by sea weeds, while fishes and crocodiles were wiggling in their hairs, leaned out from a row of “clipea” set among the portico’s arches, Alternating with them there were large heads of Medusae, in whose hairs crept horrible serpents. They were very powerful sculpture which seemed to have taken inspiration from the Aphrodisia’s ones.
Meanwhile in the nearby Basilica, the decoration based on the legends of Hercules and Liber Pater, exploded with the incredible strength of their luxuriant high reliefs. In their deep chiaroscuro exalted to the maximum by the sun and the strong African daylight the two gods patrons of the town stood out, framed by branches interlaced in contrary spirals, beautiful sculptures transformed in rich and over peopled lace by the typical drill holes of the severian sculpture.
On the side of those two important buildings, the “via colonnata” went on toward the harbour, a perfect harbour in which two long piers enclosed an ample and nearly round sheet of water. On one of its western extremity, the tower of its light house rose high over the sea which framed its base with the white foam of the waves, while all along the piers ran a long line of storehouse built to put in them all the goods waiting to be loaded. A splendid harbour very well preserved. Too well preserved indeed.
As a matter of fact the visitor, who coming from the west stood where the sheet of water would have been, find himself confronted of what seems to be a newly finished construction and this sensation grew stronger when, after having crossed the space, today completely silted, that separated the western from the oriental piers, and having avoided the quick-sands accurately signalled by the sign boards, he climbs over the eastern pier and see it clearly. Here the slabs which pave it are intact just as they were the moment the stone cutters set them down. We can plainly see the traces left on them by the stone chisels. Fresh chisels’ traces we find again in the holes cut into the corbels jutting out from the jetties, traces that if those appliances had been used, would have been smoothed long ago by the slow swinging of the mooring poles. Those corbels which are the same of the ones we still find in the ancient Aquileia’s harbour, mooring places which were used for centuries and on which the holes cut in them to fix the poles are now completely smoothed. Yet the stone employed in Aquileia’s harbour was much, but much harder than the Libyan one.
Now all this leave us very perplexed.The best calcareous stone which could be found in Libya is the one quarried at Azizia and it is always a soft material which is signed deeply by the usage, while the paving of the piers of Leptis harbour look as new. The only sign of human occupation of the area, are some which have nothing to do with an harbour’s traffic. We see them in some place of the eastern jetty where we find three or four circles with a 20 cm track going around an 1 m space. Here, while all around these marks the slabs show fresh the stone-chisels signs, the track is so smoothed, that it has become glossy. Yet those circles have not been made by some mechanical contrivance which exerted a terrible pressure on the stones: those circles were made by the naked feet of the components of a Bedouin tribe, poor people who after the fall of the Roman Empire frequented the harbour area and on the jetty used to turn around their millstone and grind the barley they had planted down the piers in this magnificent piece of land which would have been a harbour but which never was one. In short the only traces of human presence on the jetties are those few traces left by their naked feet. Naked, mind it! Try to imagine what kind of signs would have been left on this soft stone the iron circled wheels of a daily passage of carts, vedhicles bringing tons of goods and loaded them over the great number of merchant ships, and think on how soon the stone chisels marks would disappear under the rubbing wide hooves of the camels. Try to imagine how the paving of the harbour jetties wouldhave became if it had been submitted to the normal traffic of a busy harbour, and particularly if, as it has been supposed by some archaeologist - as Antonino De Vita - if the harbour had worked from Septimius Severus times and through the Byzantine period.
There were other signs of human occupation , but only in a tract of a few metersjust were the furrows of the ropes with which those nomads lifted the sacks filled with the barley they had planted in the silted harbour. Tracks which some archaeologist not very skilled in navigation identified as the ones left by ropes used to moor the ships. They forgot that on the jetty there was nothing where to attach those ropes, and thzat the ships were moored to the poles fixed in the corbels, mooring cables which would always keep very far from the margins of the pier.
Apart of those few traces of human occupation, the harbour is intact as it was at the moment of its inauguration: a new harbour, a never used harbour. An ancient portolan dated from the III cent. A.D., the “Stadiasmus maris magni” tell us an illuminating phrase: “The town of Leptis appears all white, but it has no harbour”. Now the “Stadiasmus” is not a work of fiction written by some historian or geographer who never set foot in this part of the world. The “Stadiasmus” was a portolan, one of the many ones written in the centuries, constantly revised and the best guides for the ships, indispensable documents that helped the captains to follow the right courses, find the best landing places and the best halting ones where they could restock the boat supplies. When you read something on a portolan you believe it completely, and then you would accept the fact that, notwithstanding the splendid Severian harbour, nobody ever entered in its silted basin.
The harbour had been the foremost creation of Septimius Severus, one he had hoped to see it working at full rhythm. Severus was a good emperor and not that incurable spendthrift with greatness’ manias that some historians have depicted. If he had been this kind of man he never could ideate and carry out the admirable administrative reform which remained unchanged until the end of the Roman empire. Leptis of course interested him because it was his hometown, but this was not the only reason. He perfectly knew that a good harbour set at the end of the Sirtis tract and at middle road between Carthages and Alexandria was not only useful for the Leptitans, but it was indispensable for the navigation in the Mediterranean. Moreover if the loss of trades had nearly ruined his town, the loss of the taxes and tributes which were paid each year was damaging the imperial treasury. When Severus made this move he had very clear in his mind what to do and he approved the splendid plan, which beginning with the great building trade financed by Rome to help the town’s economy, would later culminate in the creation of an admirable harbour, a “cotton” even better of Carthages’ one, and such as to make all the ships, all the ship-owners and all the merchants to come back to Leptis.
In his mind not only he wonted to substitute an efficient structure to the silted landing place: he wanted an harbour much larger and better protected one, a harbour that could never be silted. To obtain this he wanted to eliminate all the causes which, (according to him) had caused the ruin of the landing place, and, impressed by the red sand accumulated against the neronian groyne, he was convinced that the “uadi” was the culprit of the ruin of Leptis. Thus one of the first thing he did was to build a high dam upstream of the town and with it alter the course of the “uadi” which was then forced to flow into the sea very far from Leptis. This done he began to build a harbour in which the desert’s silt could never enter, and, as all the Leptitans, he believed that now everything would turn right.
At last the Harbour, the splendid harbour. was built: a large lake like basin contained by two long jetties and protected from all the winds. Unfortunately it was set just against the horizon’s point from where, bringing with it tons of sand, came the northern stream, a ruinous and continuous local stream. They didn’t heed it and they began to build the harbour in the usual way with the basin’s area encircled by an impermeable enclosure and all the water taken away so that the jetties and all the rest could be erected in a dry area. In the meantime a high dene formed itself on the harbour’s access and ruined their hopes. Severus and all the Leptitans had been sure that when the building would have been completed they could only have to open the access to the harbour and let the water flow in. They were sure that this harbour was one of the better of all the Mediterranean area and that it would begin to work. But the high dene was there and it could not be removed. The perfect condition of the jetties’ paving proves that that ships never came here, and the worst part of it was that if Severus had just removed the groyne and eliminated the links which united the outside rocks to the shore, the landing place would be all right again and could work as well as it did before the Romans had decided to set their inexperienced hands over it.
Today we can see that the splendid new harbour never worked and ships never entered it. In the meantime an earthquake having broken the dam which kept the “uadi” out of the town let it return to its old course. Afterward the red silt brought in the basin by the torrent and mixed with the little water which didn’t evaporate formed the signalled quick sands. The only ones existing in North Africa.
Leptis went on scraping a living: it was always the regional capital, thus it still had some life, but its existence as a trade centre was finished. Visiting the Corporations’ square of Ostia, the place where all the world ship owners kept their agencies, we see that we can’t find Leptis’ one. There is only the Sabratha’s ship owners’ office, a large door with on its sill a mosaic representing the emblem of this town: an elephant. Adjacent to it there is another big agency office. In its mosaic we see a merchant ships with the sail on and the inscription “NAVICULARII ET NEGOTIANTES DE SUO” which can be translated as “Independent ship owners and merchants” surely the seaside villas owners with their landing place. Today on Leptis harbour we can only put this epigraph: the Stadiasmus Maris Magni assertion.
“We see Leptis all white but it has no harbour.”